Ex-NSA lawyer warns Google, Apple: IMPENETRABLE RIM ruined BlackBerry An ex-NSA lawyer believes BlackBerry's ongoing downfall stems from the company's use of strong encryption – and Apple and Google are next to wither on the vine. Nope, it makes no sense to us, either. Speaking at the Dublin Web Summit this week, Stewart Baker, a former NSA lawyer and assistant secretary for the Department of …
Either this guy has been smoking something his former employers would have strong policies against, or he is barking mad. Who wants to be spied upon, given the bad guys (for any preferred definition of "bad"), gain the same capability?
On the other hand, maybe he is sane and just revealed the existence of a behind-the-scenes campaign by the US gov to discredit RIM to a number of big businesses?
On the third hand, for those of you with special capabilities, maybe he is talking up the 'problem' knowing full well they already have to broken enough for business as usual?
> On the other hand, maybe he is sane and just revealed the existence of a behind-the-scenes campaign by the US gov to discredit RIM to a number of big businesses?
This is certainly what came to mind when I read the guy's comments.
He seems to be implying that governments instrumented their downfall as a result of their unwillingness to tow the line. I can't think of anything else that he could possibly mean unless he seriously believes that secure comms and devices are unpopular with customers. (?)
There were definite product problems, but it did seem too as though the US carriers became very RIM-averse, and even without tinfoil one could believe that they were leaned on by the US gov.
However, the NSA guy seems not to have noticed that the market is a lot bigger now than just the US.
...is the phrase you wanted there, as in a line painted on a floor or scratched in the dirt, behind which troops are supposed to assemble themselves with a proper air of humility and obedience.
No rope or pulling involved.
Didn't this place used to have a Python-esque foot icon, or was that Slashdot?
<Sigh> Why is it some people are always going with the tinfoil first? Blackberry's business was strong in commercial, weak in the consumer market. They took their eye off the ball in the commercial market chasing after the consumer one (especially with the silly tablet effort). That started their problems, but what killed them was the problems in the commercial sector not with encryption but the refusal to open up the Blackberry backend servers to governments other than the U.S. and Europeans.
Certain countries wanted the same access to the centralized Blackberry Internet Service (BIS) and backend Enterprise Service (BES) servers that the U.S. And Europe had (there are centralized Blackberry servers that control and provide services to individual BES and BIS systems). This was reported on here at El Reg - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/08/08/indian_blackberry_crackdown/ - and stymied Blackberry's attempts to grow into the booming Indian, Middle Eastern, Eurasian and Asian markets and outside of the saturated US and European markets. In short, Blackberry were penalized in their crucial commercial market by their dedication to security and customer privacy, not encryption.
Hopefully he's just been smoking something, it'd be silly to try and sink the company which at the time made the only phone that they trusted enough themselves to get work done on and also offered the best protection for US businesses.
But, after everything else that's been leaked, who knows?
Makes you wonder if gov't operatives are canvassing major vc's and shareholders to seed the idea that their investment will wither if they don't demand unencrypted data pipelines from their vested interests..
Certainly somewhere near the start of the CIA/NSA standard playbook, I'm sure. (And why do many US programs depict the CIA operating VERY domestically all the time?)
Fortunately we know Apple's attitude to shareholders: If you don't like what we are doing, sell your shares and buy something else. For example, that was what they told people when a small group of shareholders complained of the "wasted" money spent on going greener instead of using cheaper coal energy (cough cough) to run their data centres. That's what I think they will tell anyone who wants to get rid of security.
Fortunately we know Apple's attitude to shareholders: If you don't like what we are doing, sell your shares and buy something else.
I can't tell you how much that improved Apple's standing in my eyes. Really...I don't know why more companies tell troublesome shareholders to bugger off if they don't like how the company's being run. If the company's profitable, the share price will take care of itself, and if the greedy fat-asses don't like that, well...I don't remember seeing a law that says you have to by Company X's stock.
Makes you wonder if gov't operatives are canvassing major vc's and shareholders to seed the idea that their investment will wither if they don't demand unencrypted data pipelines from their vested interests..
Shirley, said vc's and shareholders aren't that brain-dead stupid, are they?
Oh, wait....
It's a sign of desperation.
Weakening crypto will basically have the same effect as the police recommending you install easy to pick locks in your backdoor so they can check any time that you're not committing any crimes.
There are two main problems with that approach:
1 - it makes it easier for the bad guys (and certainly for their current favourite, the terrible terrorist) to defraud people. Or, let me translate that in Daily Mail speak: we would be HELPING the terrorists to finance what they do because we'd make regular crime so much easier.
2 - the mainstay approach for these people to hide is to steal identities. Now, what gets easier when you make it easy to hack stuff? Err, well, umm,.. Yes, exactly.
Especially in the US it appears all sanity has gone out of the window. What I find particularly galling is that US companies are attempting to solve the problem that they cannot protect privacy to EU levels (which costs them a LOT in sales already) by weakening EU laws to the same broken level - that's in reality what Safe Harbor does.
So, enough already. Stop the bad PSYOPS because it's no longer working. I guess it would have if you had not so grandly abused it, but now you're facing at least a decade of trying to rebuild some trust. I'd be surprised if you manage this in 10 years, actually.
One more thing: if you stopped focusing on approaches that are wrong, you could maybe develop the mental bandwidth to come up with new ideas that do NOT involve ignoring people's right to privacy.
In my humble opinion it was MS that hastened Blackberry's corporate departure due to Blackberry's inability to provide a competitor to Apple iOS/Android in a timely manner (see Playbook - RIM provides a "corporate" tablet with no e-mail integration demonstrating their knowledge of their corporate customers).
If MS hadn't released the full ActiveSync client specs, Apple/Android would have struggled to integrate with large companies Exchange infrastructure. My suspicion was MS did it to try and avoid Google being the de facto e-mail standard for mobiles, but that is speculation.
Crypto ruined RIM? No, crypto gave RIM their 15 minutes of fame - being unwilling or unable to adapt to changes in the mobile marketplace killed them.
P.s. the corpse may still be walking around but RIM is dead without all those new licence fees keeping them in the black.
This post has been deleted by its author
Ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, why would an 8-foot-tall Wookiee want to live on Endor, with a bunch of 2-foot-tall Ewoks? That does not make sense!
But more important, you have to ask yourself: What does this have to do with this case? Nothing. Ladies and gentlemen, it has nothing to do with this case! It does not make sense!
Look at me. I'm an NSA lawyer attacking a Canadian tech company, and I'm talkin' about Chewbacca! Does that make sense?
Ladies and gentlemen, I am not making any sense! None of this makes sense! And so you have to remember, when you're in that jury room deliberatin' and conjugatin' the Emancipation Proclamation, does it make sense? No! Ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, it does not make sense! If Chewbacca lives on Endor, you must acquit!
"Is Big Business bigger than the Government?"
Well, Google never seemed to mind abusing their monopoly.
... and don't forget - a company's board of directors is not elected by the general public!
If you think the general public has any say in the purchase of the majority of shares, I have the usual stash of gold bricks for sale to you at an unbelievably low price. Most shares are traded and held by large institutions whose directors themselves have close links to Government.
"The public" in the US buys phones like this: they go into a store and a sales clerk tries to sell them the contract that he gets the most commission on. So when, say, the BB Z10 is at the back of the shop, powered down, the sales person has not been trained on it and gets no commission, and the front of the shop has an iPhone display and a Samsung display, what does the general public buy?
I don't know the extent to which WP has had the same treatment, but I suspect that in their case it is more likely that the carriers deeply fear Microsoft rather than the NSA.
No, I'm sorry william.
This is where the NSA "necessity of the surveillance society" argument skips merrily down the road to Heck. There is no evil twin Board of Directors who do not want you to buy the company's stock or products.
That said, I am surprised Apple, Google don't have both Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde on the Board. His services must be in great demand in Silicon Valley.
I used to stand in for an IT director for many years in an SME. Crypto and security is the sole reason why we tolerated BES and RIM (we hated it with passion).
Now the fact that quite a few governments tried to push BES and RIM out of business is a different matter. One should not mistake customers and adversaries.
Absolutely this. They only lasted as long as they did because of security. Many IT departments advised of the risks of moving to BYOD policies, and needing to license a new product for mobile device management is NOT something you want to do... Until you realize that the C-Level execs are all toting iPhones and Androids around and they'll have your head if you don't "make it work!"
Sad, as BB is the only one that is actually secure by default.
WAS secure by default. The rot set in when certain nations asked publicly for the keys, which AFAIK revealed something that was already known at government level: if you want to secure it, you need to own the keys. Government approved BB devices always relied on separate keys to what the public got their hands on, but that wasn't really publicly known until some nations decided to go public with their demands.
The second ab-so-lu-te-ly stupid thing RIM did was to make it possible to load up Android apps. Even if they run in a separate segment, it still amounts to inviting burglars for tea.
They dropped the ball there, which is IMHO a shame because the QNX based OS they came up with is otherwise a heck of a lot better than what they had before.
This post has been deleted by its author
Do these guys think the public is that dumb to believe a line like that?
I mean seriously; the growth of the Blackberry was almost entirely based on them taking phone security seriously; enterprises and government agencies that were squeamish about using any handheld device for communications went for Blackberrys. This security didn't contribute to their decline either, I think they simply didn't expect Android and IPhone to drink their milkshake to the extent they did. I would say their security is largely what is keeping their market share at the level it is at. Of course, RIM's not bankrupt yet, it's always possible they could make at least some rebound.
The public was dumb enough to let them turn the Mujahadeen into the Taliban and Al Qaeda, dumb enough to let them invade Iraq once and not finish the job and then to make good/bad on that, let them invent WMDs to invade again and fuck up a country.
Invade Libya and fuck up a country with the highest literacy, one of the best life expectancys,and a working health service, etc etc . So yes they think the world is dumb enough.
Not just the USians all of us!
we could help the NSA & GCHQ grow their roses - and smell sweeter?
I don't know whether http://www.shitexpress.com/ is the right place for gifts, I mean that's getting on for half a million parcels..
RIM ran their 'secure servers' in such places as Bracknell/Reading & Canada (deep 5*eyes) and caused outrage with users when they went offline, unsuccessful 'tap' patches? There was a succession of (mildly repressive) governments (deep 5*eyes friends) who started demanding local servers, India, UAE, France, etc if I recall correctly. I'm sure that RIM delivered local access. VERIFIED
NEW DELHI, Aug 3 2010 (Reuters) - Research in Motion RIM has agreed to allow Indian security agencies to monitor its BlackBerry services, The Economic Times newspaper reported on Tuesday, after pressure from governments worried about national security. RIM has offered to share with Indian security agencies its technical codes for corporate email services, open up access to all consumer emails within 15 days and also develop tools in six to eight months to allow monitoring of chats, the paper said, citing internal government documents.
I suspect RIM now have problems because BBM was 'fashionable' with the teens for ten minutes, (same as popular beat combo OneDirection in 2014, but in 5 years time 1D will be...) if RIM built all their markets on fashion + secure crypto, then handed out the keys to all & sundry, not just NSA, then how could that possibly fail as a business model?
Frankly, I have recently been wondering just why the ecosystem is such a powerful idea.
Most apps are a pile of smelly steaming unmentionable from the unfashionable end of the average dog.
The Apple and Google app stores are essentially slush piles, if you allow me to borrow a phrase from the book publishing industry. Yes, there are a few rare gems inside, but most of it is slush of the worst order.
Still, for some people there is money in muck.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
